Thomas Bailey
Donna Merritt
Institute on Education and the Economy
Teachers College, Columbia University
National Center for Research in Vocational Education
University of
California at Berkeley
2030 Addison Street, Suite 500
Berkeley, CA
94704
Supported by
The Office of Vocational and Adult Education
U.S.
Department of Education
December, 1995
FUNDING INFORMATION
| Project Title: | National Center for Research in Vocational Education |
|---|---|
| Grant Number: | V051A30003-95A/V051A30004-95A |
| Act under which Funds Administered: | Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act P.L. 98-524 |
| Source of Grant: | Office of Vocational and Adult Education U.S. Department of Education Washington, DC 20202 |
| Grantee: | The Regents of the University of California c/o National Center for Research in Vocational Education 2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1250 Berkeley, CA 94704 |
| Director: | David Stern |
| Percent of Total Grant Financed by Federal Money: | 100% |
| Dollar Amount of Federal Funds for Grant: | $6,000,000 |
| Disclaimer: | This publication was prepared pursuant to a grant with the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education. Grantees undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgement in professional and technical matters. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official U.S. Department of Education position or policy. |
| Discrimination: | Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states: "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Therefore, the National Center for Research in Vocational Education project, like every program or activity receiving financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education, must be operated in compliance with these laws. |
The fundamental goal of this report is to contribute to the development of a skill standards system. It does that in several ways. First, it provides some basic information about the skill standards movement and the pilot projects that will be helpful to groups trying to introduce or improve standards systems. Second, it seeks to raise some basic questions about the purpose of such a system. We argue that there are short-term goals which focus on improving the flow of information among schools, students, and employers. There are also long-term goals that place skill standards within the context of broad efforts to reform schools and workplaces. While both sets of goals are important, the nature and governance of skill standards systems designed to meet the long-term goals may differ sharply from systems focused on the short-term goals. Our report is designed both to clarify the tradeoffs involved with achieving those goals and to evaluate the extent to which the current efforts to build skill standards systems address either the long- or the short-term goals. Our conclusions are presented in the form of a series of suggestions for strengthening the pilot projects and broadening the system of skill standards. These recommendations are grouped into three broad categories: (1) goals, (2) substantive content, and (3) governance.
Advocates hope that skill standards systems can help achieve a variety of goals. Any assessment of the effectiveness of these systems as well as judgments about the level or resources that should be devoted to these systems will depend on the ultimate objectives of the movement. At this point, there is no strong consensus about the central goals, and indeed, different stakeholders may have conflicting goals. Simplifying greatly, there are two overall goals--one short-term and one long-term.
The short-term goal is to improve the information available to students, prospective job applicants, and employers. A set of skill standards for a relevant occupation will let employers know more about what job applicants can do, and tell students what types of skills they need to acquire to be eligible for particular jobs or occupations. Many employers involved with the skill standards projects appear to be interested primarily in this type of improved information.
According to the long-term goal, the skill standards movement is part of a much broader strategy to reform both work and education. The objectives of this strategy are to develop and deepen the partnership between schools and employers; to increase learning that takes place on the job; to help change education so that it will be more in tune with current needs of the workplace; and, ultimately, to help move workplaces towards high-performance work systems.
The current skill standards projects have made significant progress towards the short-term goal. The process has given many employers a framework in which to articulate their needs in ways that can be understood by schools and students, although there is still a long way to go before the pilot projects develop fully functioning programs with associated assessment and curriculum.
For some, the motivation for the skill standards movement is more ambitious, however. Educators, policymakers, and analysts involved with the projects tend to take this broader view, although some employers also agree. According to this view, the United States already has many job analysis and certification systems that could be used as vehicles for improved communication between employers and educators. The dramatic increase in the interest in standards arose from a conviction that significant reform is necessary, particularly in the training and education and the management and utilization of so-called front-line workers--nonmanagerial and nonprofessional production and service workers. Advocates hope that the skill standards movement will be a central component of that broad reform strategy. From this long-term perspective, there has been some important progress.
Nevertheless, there are some significant areas in need of improvement as efforts continue to move towards a stronger consensus on the broad objectives of the system. For example, not all employers have altered their workplaces in accordance with the tenets of high-performance work organizations even though few dispute the rationale and benefits of establishing them. If skill standards are being developed to highlight the demands placed upon workers operating in high-performance workplaces, one must not underestimate the difficulty of achieving "buy-in" from employers with less progressive work environments who will see little use for high-performance standards in their current operations. Indeed, these employers and employees will have as much, if not more, impact on the ultimate success of the skill standards movement as those operating in high-performance work organizations.
In this report, we developed a distinction between two broad conceptualizations of skills--the skill components and the professional model. In traditional workplaces, workers are expected to carry out well-defined tasks under the direction of managers and planners. The skills of these workers can be thought of as a collection of tools (tasks) available for the use of managers. In this case, it is reasonable to summarize the capabilities of the workers as a list of tasks that they can accomplish. Underlying academic skills such as literacy are seen as a foundation upon which tasks are accomplished. But in high-performance workplaces, the jobs of workers are less well-defined. Workers themselves have more autonomy to decide how a particular goal will be reached. They make more decisions about which tasks to use, when they will be used, and how they will be combined. In this case, it is the ability to carry out tasks that are seen as the foundation upon which broader functions within an organization are accomplished. Although the ability to carry out specific tasks continues to be important, the standards should be built around those broader functions rather than being limited to narrowly defined tasks.
In order to analyze the form and content of the skill standards and to compare them to the two models, we developed a two dimensional typology to categorize the form of the projects. This categorization revealed wide variation in the form of the standards.
One dimension was the extent to which the standards integrated vocational and academic material. Within this, we established three categories. In the first, which was most consistent with the skill components model, academic skills were sharply differentiated from vocational/technical skills (and listed separately). In the second, academic skills were applied to a generic workplace setting but remained distinct from vocational skills. In the third, which was most consistent with the professional model, vocational and academic skills were integrated.
The second dimension was the extent to which skills were integrated into workplace functions. There were three categories here as well. In the first, which corresponded most closely to the skill components model, skills were listed generically with no workplace application relevant to the specific industry or occupation. In the second, workplace applications were provided as examples to indicate how skills were used. And in the third, which was closest to the professional model, skills were integrated into critical aspects of the job and the relevant industrial and organizational contexts.
Six out of twenty-one projects that participated were categorized in the lowest level of both dimensions--we referred to these standards as compartmentalized. Four of the twenty-one projects were categorized in the highest level of both dimensions--these we referred to as consolidated standards. And the remaining eleven were categorized in the intermediate level on at least on dimension--these were referred to as contextualized standards.
The most common job analysis techniques reinforce the skill components rather than the professional model. DACUM and V-TECS tend to result in narrowly defined task lists, although some of the projects have been able to modify the process to support a consolidated approach to standards setting. More comprehensive approaches to job or occupational analysis that have been developed over the last few decades require more time, resources, and specially trained analysts. The search for rapid implementation and attempts to involve a wide group of stakeholders, especially employers, have created incentives to use the simplest method. This tendency will only be reinforced when projects turn to assessment. It will be much easier to check off the mastery of a set of tasks than to try to evaluate the effectiveness of workers to carry out broadly defined roles within their organizations. Furthermore, it is revealing that even job analysis methods that collect more comprehensive data end up developing job descriptions based on narrowly defined task lists. In other words, they do not use much of the information that they collect. Ironically, the same development that has spurred the interest in skill standards--the changing nature of work--also makes it more difficult and complex to create those standards.
Although we have argued that the professional model can serve as an important benchmark for the development of industry-based skill standards systems, this does not mean that current practice in professional education should simply be adopted. Professional organizations are struggling with some of the same problems that have confronted those developing systems for front-line workers. The overall objective should be to develop approaches to understanding skills in reasonably broad clusters of jobs or occupations. There is no question that this is an extremely difficult task.
There are important political reasons why project managers want to develop concrete results quickly. Nevertheless, experimentation is one of the goals of pilot projects, and given the current enthusiasm for standards, particular efforts should be made to address these admittedly difficult problems.
The future of the skill standards process depends on collaboration among employers in articulating their needs and in developing and perhaps paying for training and appropriate education. Ultimately, employers will also have to be willing to use the standards in their hiring and promotion decisions. Furthermore, the experience of employer associations in the skill standards system may have been useful in the development of related education and human resource programs. For example, organized employer collaboration is also necessary for the development of widespread private sector participation in school-to-work programs, in helping schools design improved programs and curricula, and in bringing about changes in production processes and work organizations. Lessons learned in the skill standards movement may therefore be relevant to other initiatives. To gain the full advantage of this experience, an organized attempt needs to be made to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the role of employer organizations.
4. Strengthen the partnership between employer organizations and schools.
Most of the pilot projects have placed a strong emphasis on the involvement of employers. Perhaps as a result of this, while educators have taken the lead in a small number of projects, in most projects they have played a decidedly secondary role. Although they have been present on the governance and advisory committees, they have tended to be passive participants. To some extent this might be expected since the early stages of the projects were focused on the needs of the workplace, and it is only now that the staff is turning to assessment and curriculum development--areas in which educators are more likely to be needed. Nevertheless, modern thinking about organizational design suggests that projects are most effectively accomplished if they involve cross-functional and cross-departmental teams. According to this view, production, engineering, and marketing personnel should work closely with designers even at the design stage. Similarly, rather than promoting a system in which employers specify what they need and then hand off the standards to educators to develop curriculum, project managers should work towards more integrated involvement of these groups at all stages of the projects. Thus, educators should be integrated into the standards design process and employers should continue to be involved when curricula are developed.
5. The involvement of workers and worker representatives in the governance structure needs to be strengthened.
For the most part, workers have played an advisory role in the pilot projects. Often, as a result of the modifications of the DACUM job analysis technique, workers were only brought into the process after a complete draft of the standards had been developed. Worker participation in the governance is a central component of the professional model. The more autonomy involved with a job, the more important it is for workers themselves to participate actively in the development of standards that describe those jobs. The closer a firm or industry moves towards a high-performance work organization, the more important it will be to integrate workers into the standards-development process.
One possible explanation for the generally weak worker role in the pilot programs is that the move towards high-performance work is exaggerated. Employers are not really interested in broadening the role of workers either in their production or their standards setting processes. If this is the case, it may be particularly important for project managers to emphasize the role of workers in the projects as a means to promote discussion about organizational innovation in the industry.
There are also practical problems that thwart the increased participation of workers in the skill standards process. Attempts to simplify the job analysis process have tended to reduce the role of workers in setting standards. Convening groups of workers and involving them in a significant way is often difficult and time consuming. Employers are reluctant to release workers for the time required for them to participate even in the more passive roles assigned to them in the current projects. In other countries and indeed in some occupations in this country, unions represent worker interests, and union staff, who are often ex-workers, are assigned the responsibility of working more intensively with the standards projects. This avoids the time conflict experienced by workers with full-time jobs at the workplace. But the weak position of unions in this country reduces their potential contribution to the standards process. Although unions have been involved in some of the pilot projects, in other pilot projects, conflicts between the unions and employers, or explicit efforts to avoid working with unions, have prevented any meaningful collaboration.
Although we have suggested that the projects need to move towards the professional model, the best approach is probably not one in which workers have almost complete control over the process of setting and certifying standards, as is true in some of the professions. Managerial and consumer interests must also have a voice in the process. Nevertheless, project managers must find ways to establish meaningful partnerships between workers, employers, and educators. Many advocates see the skill standards movement as part of a broad reform strategy to promote high-performance work organization. A central component of innovative work organization is the increased autonomy of front-line workers. Thus, if the standards are seen as part of a strategy to promote greater worker autonomy, there is a conflict between a skill standards process based on a passive role for workers.
The skill standards movement has emerged from a conviction that technology and market changes have caused significant modifications in the types of skills and behaviors needed by workers on-the-job. This conviction has motivated a broad education reform movement that involves changes in curriculum and pedagogy and seeks to tie education more closely to the emerging needs of the workplace. Industry-based skill standards are believed to be a crucial component of that movement. Advocates not only argue that skill standards will strengthen the educational system, but that they will also become a critical part of reform efforts in the workplace. Working together, educators and employers will get a chance to reexamine not only their relationships with each other, but also activities within their own institutions. As a result of the growing conviction that skill standards can make a significant contribution to improving both education and work, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act passed in 1994 established a National Skill Standards Board to promote the development of a national system of voluntary industry-based skill standards. Even earlier, starting in 1992, the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education established twenty-two pilot projects to help lay the groundwork for a national system.
The fundamental goal of this report is to contribute to the development of a skill standards system. It does that in several ways. First, it provides some basic information about the skill standards movement and the pilot projects that will be helpful for groups trying to introduce or improve standards systems. Second, it seeks to raise some basic questions about the purpose of such a system. We argue that there are short-term goals which focus on improving the flow of information among schools, students, and employers. There are also long-term goals that place skill standards within the context of broad efforts to reform schools and workplaces. While both sets of goals are important, the nature and governance of skill standards systems designed to meet the long-term goals may differ sharply from systems focused on the short-term goals. Our report is designed both to clarify the tradeoffs involved with achieving those goals and to evaluate the extent to which the current efforts to build skill standards systems address either the long- or the short-term goals.
In broad terms, our conclusions suggest that the skill standards movement has the potential to serve the long-run goals associated with innovation and reform in schools and workplaces. Nevertheless, many aspects of the current efforts remain rooted in past notions of skills. The conceptualization of skill which serves as a basis for many of the skill standards projects are more closely associated with traditional rather than more innovative approaches to organizing work. To be sure, there remain many traditionally organized workplaces, and systems of standards based on current or past notions about skills may be useful to those workplaces. To a large extent, however, the skill standards movement has arisen as part of an effort to bring the country's education system more in line with emerging, rather than traditional, needs of the workplace. This suggests that at least the objective of designing a system consistent with skills and behaviors needed in innovative workplaces must be considered explicitly.
The more traditional characteristics of the emerging skill standards systems are partly the result of past practice. Project managers have, for the most part, adapted traditional methods for analyzing jobs and developing standards. It is not surprising that those methods, developed in earlier decades when the demands of the workplace were different, are in conflict with emerging needs. Many managers are aware of this limitation and of the practical barriers to skill standards development and implementation. Indeed, the same factors that create a greater need for skill standards systems also make them more difficult to establish.
There are reasonable arguments for improving the system of skill standards and certification. For example, the General Accounting Office (GAO) (1993a) argues that such a system would help employers identify qualified workers, save money on applicant screening, aid in recruiting, and improve the public perception of firms. A better certification system would indicate to students what they must learn and provide a focused motivation for acquiring the particular skills that they will use in the workplace. Graduates would also have better access to a national labor market (if the certification is recognized nationally), thus promoting their geographic and occupational mobility. And prospective students, employers, and the public would be better able to assess the effectiveness of educational institutions or training programs.
While these arguments make sense, their force does not depend on current economic conditions. Indeed, they would have been equally logical at any time over recent decades. They do not explain why standards have emerged so prominently in the current policy discussion.
Although skill standards and certification are now a fundamental part of the current education reform strategy, ten years ago they were entirely absent from the reform discussion at the national level. A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) and the cascade of reports that followed its publication did not emphasize skill certification. This dramatic increase in the prominence of the issue gives the impression that skill standards are something that U.S. policymakers have recently discovered in Europe and Japan.[1] As two prominent commentators argue, "The United States has virtually no experience with a large-scale system for certifying the skills of new entrants or experienced workers" (Berryman & Rosenbaum, 1992, p. 51).
But this impression is misleading. Although one could argue about the meaning of "large-scale," there is in fact a long history of the development of standards systems in the U.S. For example, the competency-based education strategy (CBE), which received widespread support during the 1970s, appears to share many features of the current movement. CBE requires formal exit requirements to be stated in clear and explicit terms. Outcome goals are designed to be easily attached to concrete behaviors and expected performance requirements that were known and agreed upon. CBE advocates call for collaborative decision making by all those interested in students' educational progress. The system is intended to make individuals aware of when, how long, and how often opportunities for both instruction and evaluation will be provided (Spady, 1977). Supporters also indulged in some of the enthusiastic hyperbole that appears to be common today. One CBE proponent declared in 1977 that "Very few educational concepts in recent years have had as great an impact on educators and on society as Competency-Based Education" (Knaak, 1977, p. 1). Furthermore, CBE continues to be used by many educators.
There continues to be a profusion of systems in the U.S. for setting skill standards and for certifying their achievement, as a recent report on skill standards by Joan Wills and her colleagues (1993a, 1993b, 1993c) makes abundantly clear. They report on dozens of programs in a wide variety of occupations. Many organizations, partnerships, and associations in the public and private sectors have been developing certification processes for many years. And professional and craft occupations have extensive and well-developed systems.
The arguments in favor of skill standards and the extensive experience that American educators already have with certification systems raise two questions. First, why has the issue gained such national prominence only recently? After all, as we have pointed out, many of the arguments for a stronger system of skill standards do not depend on the current educational or economic environments. Second, why are the current systems considered inadequate?
One of the most obvious distinctions between some of these countries and the U.S. involved the systems of skill standards and certification. A system of standards would appear to address directly the most serious perceived problems in the U.S. system. Standards would identify for students what they needed to learn, they would signal the skills and capabilities of students to employers, and if employers took them seriously, they would provide a focused motivation for students. All of this would facilitate the transition from school to work.
Thus, the recent preoccupation with skill standards emerges particularly from a concern about the economic performance of nonprofessional and nonmanagerial workers. The traditional system is no longer adequate for the new demands placed on these workers in their new "professionalized" roles. This "mismatch" reduces the overall productivity of the economy and reduces the standard of living of individual workers. The system of skill standards is a crucial part of a broader reform strategy designed to promote innovative approaches to production and human resource management ("high-performance work organization") and to bring the education and school-to-work transition systems more in line with demands of the economy.[4]
While breaking down the duality between head and hand has received a great deal of attention in discussions about curriculum and pedagogy, the extent to which that duality rules thinking about skills and skill certification has not been discussed. Although skill standards are promoted as part of a strategy to create an education system based on the rejection of the classic dualities, much of the discussion of standards and certification is still couched in traditional dualistic terms.
This distinction between an approach to skill standards based on the traditional dualities and one based on a more integrated perspective can be made clear by developing two broad models of skills and accompanying certification. One will be referred to as the skill components model and the other as the professional model. These two models differ along two dimensions--the conceptualization of skill and the role of workers in the development and governance of the standards system.
The conceptualization of skills is the first feature that distinguishes the two models. The performance and responsibilities of professional workers cannot be characterized by dividing their jobs into a list of discrete tasks or skills and then adding up tasks that the professional has mastered. The nuances of their roles and responsibilities make narrowly defined listings of their skills difficult to produce. To make sense of the work of professionals, it is necessary to examine their performance as a whole, to study how they combine the many components of their skill and behavior. On the other hand, the nonprofessional worker in the traditional organization works under the direction of supervisors or professionals whose responsibility is to combine the tasks of subordinates into a coherent whole. In this case, it is possible to characterize the effectiveness of workers by cataloguing the separate tasks that they can perform. Here the focus is on the pieces that make up the whole rather than on the entirety of the activity.
The role of the worker or worker representatives in the development of systems of skill standards and certification is the second aspect that distinguishes the skill components from the professional model. In the skill components model, while nonprofessional workers may be consulted about skill standards, the authority and control rests with managers and educators rather than the workers themselves. In the case of the professional model, the workers or their representatives have a crucial role in the definition of the standards and their certification.
Based on the skill components framework, workers are trained to perform tasks (skilled workers may know how to perform many tasks) that are explicitly defined by their supervisors and managers. They are not expected to know when to do them, how they fit into related tasks, or how they relate to a final product. Nor are nonprofessional workers expected to figure out new and improved ways of carrying out their required functions or how their traditional functions might be applied to different situations (Bailey, 1989).
Professionals or higher-level technical personnel are expected to be able to do these broader, more open-ended activities and the notions of skills associated with them reflect those broader expectations. Because of the lack of an overall organizational perspective in the occupational profile of nonprofessional workers, nonprofessional workers are not provided with the big picture of the organization or their role within it. The skills of the workers can be considered a tool box at the disposal of managers and professionals. Managers can select the individual tools that they need and it is up to the managers, not the workers, to select the appropriate combination of tools.
The skill components model also has a tendency to generate a proliferation of occupational categories. If occupations are thought of as an accumulation of well-defined tasks, then it becomes necessary to establish different occupational or job definitions each time there is a different accumulation of tasks. Wills' (1993a) cataloguing of current systems of skill standards reveals many narrow job definitions. For example, "agricultural power and machinery has three suboccupations--(1) farm equipment mechanic, (2) farm machinery set-up mechanic, and (3) tractor mechanic. Perhaps the best example of the explosion of job titles is the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, which includes definitions for over twelve thousand occupations.
This conception of skill has two important implications. First, from this perspective, the effectiveness of a worker can be characterized by a list of the individual tasks that that worker can carry out. This applies both to skilled and unskilled workers. In the skill components model, the difference between the skilled and unskilled worker is the length of the list of tasks that they can perform. Second, in the skill components model, it makes sense that managers have control over the process of developing skill standards and their certification. If managers--functioning outside the occupation itself--have the responsibility of making a coherent whole out of the work of the subordinates, then it is reasonable that they, not the workers, should set and regulate the required skills.
Much of the long discussion about professionalism has focused on the roots of the power and status of professionals. As Nelsen and Barley (1994) argue, "the analytic emphasis has been overwhelmingly structural and concerned primarily with explicating the role played by certain material conditions in the acquisition, maintenance, and loss of professional power and status" (p. 4). There has been a great deal of discussion on skill content and activities that professionals perform, but, in many cases, authors are interested primarily in the role that the content of professional work plays in establishing the social power and position of the professional worker. As Abbott (1988, p. 3) points out, most of the focus is on how professionals are organized to do what they do rather than what they do. Typologies of professional characteristics often do not include content. Abbott identifies four versions of professionalism--(1) functional, (2) structural, (3) monopolist, and (4) cultural. The content of the work is central to only one--functional. Abbott does emphasize that the abstract nature of the work enables the survival of professional occupations, but other perspectives give even less importance to work content. One perspective holds that professionals derive their status and position from the power that they have over entrance to their professions through their control of appropriate educational institutions and the certification process (Brint, 1993). More broadly, the "social constructionist" perspective emphasizes that professional status derives largely from institutional and social factors rather than any inherent characteristics of the work done by professionals (Attewell, 1990). Much of this discussion is critical of professional power, arguing that professionals use it to raise their incomes and prevent competition. By insulating themselves from the market, professionals serve the interests of their profession rather than the best interests of their customers. For example, doctors are often criticized for focusing on specializations, surgical procedures, and drugs and neglecting family practice and prevention.
Our concern here is not directly with problems having to do with defining and attaining professional status. Rather, we focus on two related issues: (1) the implications for skill standards on the content of work, and (2) the role that workers and managers play in defining those standards. Goode (1969) defines two fundamental traits to professionalism: (1) the knowledge base and (2) the ideal of service. How do these relate to the changing role of production workers in a high-performance workplace?
Collins (1976) describes the irony involved in the type of duties and responsibilities typically carried out by the professional. Professions involve interventions with uncertain outcomes which implies that an effective, reproducible method--a routine--has not yet been invented to deal with the particular problem. The concept of professional skill is paradoxical--it depends on the absence of an effective technique or technology to produce the desired outcome; a skilled occupation is one that cannot reliably do what it is called on to do (work cannot be carried out effectively every time and this becomes a resource around which those who are employed at the work build their claims to being especially skilled). Similarly, Wolfson et al. (1980) describe professional performance in the following manner: "The uniqueness of a professional's role lies in the `agency' functions of diagnosis and prescription. Professionals are charged by their clients with making important decisions on their behalf . . ." (p. 191).
To be sure, professionals must also be able to carry out specific tasks. As Hoachlander (1995) points out, it is possible to have a view of the skills of a pilot that is much more complex and nuanced than a list of skills or tasks, but a pilot still must be able to use instruments to land a plane. No pilot certification system could be considered adequate if it did not require that pilots could accomplish that specific task. Similarly, surgeons would not be worth much if they did not know how to make an incision and close it up, and a quantitative analyst could accomplish little if they could not use the appropriate software. Indeed, professional training often involves mastering lists of specific skills. Nevertheless, two professionals, equally adept at carrying out these types of specific tasks, could differ profoundly in their effectiveness as professionals. Hoachlander argues that a pilot who can hit the landing path every time will nevertheless crash if they use poor judgment in deciding when it is safe to land. One of the greatest criticisms of surgeons is that they do not know when not to cut, and there are plenty of analysts who have mastered the most complex software, but have little idea about which variables to include in the analysis.
For the professional, the specific tasks are seen as the foundation or enablers for more complex general functions such as problem solving, reasoning, or using judgment. In contrast, for the nonprofessional worker, the broader "academic" skills are the foundation or enablers of the specific tasks. Thus, the tasks are the ultimate activity for nonprofessional workers, while for the professional, the tasks are necessary (but not sufficient) to carry out the core activities of the profession.
As we have argued, in the high-performance workplace, it is the worker, not the manager, who must make sense of the work. In contrast to the traditional workplace, the worker must understand the relationships among the various tasks that they perform. As with the professional worker, the tasks are the building blocks that enable high-performance workers to carry out their broader functions.
Although the worker in the high-performance workplace does not serve an individual client in the same way that professionals do, innovative workplaces do require a stronger collective orientation. A fundamental principle of more decentralized organizations is that workers at all levels can be expected to make decisions that reflect the broader interests of the organization, and not necessarily the narrow immediate interests of the worker.[7] On the other hand, proponents of workplace innovation argue that the ultimate interests of the worker will be served through the effect of the innovative practices on the strength of the organization as a whole.[8] Thus, while the workers will not have a professional-type client-practitioner relationship, they will share with professionals a need to relate to a set of interests broader than their own, although ultimately they are expected to benefit from that broader ethic of service.
In most cases, the certification cannot be separated from the nature of the training itself. Many of the professions require extensive guided practical experience to achieve various levels of certification. For example, in 1992, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants issued a new policy report which called for the incorporation of practical experience into the required prelicensure education for CPAs. The Institute of Certified Records Managers requires proof of professional work experience before applicants can sit for the certification exam. The exam itself includes case studies that require essay responses (Wills, 1993c). Students in professional programs know that they have little chance to get better jobs without summer internships or post-training experience which give some indication of how they actually perform in realistic situations. And many graduate students learn that impressive scores on certifying exams are quickly forgotten if they cannot produce a good dissertation--that is, if they cannot effectively perform the core activities of the profession.
Mid-career professionals, when they market themselves, emphasize their concrete accomplishments. Where individual performance is difficult to measure, they emphasize the nature of their experience. In these cases, a long list of skills would count for little if the applicant could not demonstrate an ability to combine those skills in such a way that they were performed effectively.
The established professions have, over time, developed a body of specialized knowledge, codified and transmitted through professional education and clinical practice. As a result of specialized knowledge gained through study and mentored practice, professionals are granted autonomy in their practice on the premise that only those who have completed [a] rigorous course of study should be able to apply their knowledge and to determine the norms of practice. If teaching is to become a true profession, educators must reverse the traditional practice of allowing state legislators to set standards. (p. 135)While workers in innovative workplaces may not have full control over standard setting, to the extent that it is workers themselves who are expected to make sense out of their work, they must be integrally involved with the development of standards. As soon as managers focus primarily on the outcomes of work and give more responsibility for specific decisions to workers themselves, those managers have a weaker understanding of exactly what is necessary to do the job effectively. Thus a standard setting process in a high-performance workplace that does not give a central role to workers, will result in incomplete or inaccurate standards.
In the U.S., well-established apprenticeship programs mixing related training, on-the-job training, and skill credentialing are present in many types of industries and occupations, but this road to higher pay and broader skills is most common and established in iron-working and construction industries. Throughout the country, construction accounts for over half of the registered apprentices. At any one point in time, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that approximately 350,000 individuals participate in about 43,000 registered apprenticeship programs in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Labor, 1991/1992).
Graduates of apprenticeship programs earn a credential and, through this, future employers have a clear idea about the domains of skill that they have. At the same time, employers have more information than simply the content of a certification test. They know that each apprentice has had experience in a wide variety of tasks and problems associated with the occupation.
Apprenticeships, and related skill certifications, have survived in construction for a variety of reasons. Two important reasons involve the institutional context of the industry and the nature of the work.
The institutional arrangements in the construction industry are crucial. The construction labor market is highly regulated due to the importance of federal funding in many construction markets. Employers working on construction projects with federal funding must pay journeyman's wages (usually the union wage) to all those working in many occupations, but registered apprentices in those occupations can receive lower pay. The majority of apprenticeship programs in construction are administered jointly by unions and employer associations according to collective bargaining agreements. These agreements spread the cost and responsibility for apprenticeship training, curriculum planning, and testing. Significantly, this involves workers and their representatives directly in defining the necessary skills and overseeing their certification.
Another explanation for the persistence of apprenticeship in construction involves the nature of construction jobs. It is very difficult to standardize construction work. Skilled construction workers are constantly confronted by unexpected and unique situations that require problem-solving skills and teamwork. In other words, construction puts demands on workers that are similar to those thought to be required by high-performance organizations.
The 1991 Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) was an attempt to break out of the task orientation of the traditional approaches and address the issues raised by the new conceptions of work and related skills. SCANS gathered a group of experts with experience in analyzing the skill requirements of the emerging technology and innovative work organization. The group identified five competencies and three foundation skills that they felt were essential to either work preparation or further education. Commissioners agreed on the following basic/foundation skill components:
Although the concept of SCANS and similar broad-based skills categorizations add a new, more professionalized and autonomous dimension to workers' roles, they fail to break completely with the traditional classification of the worker. By adhering to strict differentiation between SCANS skills and technical and academic skills, jobs are still being characterized as lists, albeit more extensive lists. In addition to traditional occupational tasks, problem solving, creative thinking, and knowing how to learn skills ("skills" which are presumably needed in new high-performance workplaces) are merely added. In order to meet the needs of the new workplace, while staying in line with traditional conceptualizations of the worker, SCANS is simply a broader listing of parts or component skills--not a movement toward a model that integrates the worker as a whole with the overall organizational context or focuses more directly on the overall performance of the worker.
We suggest that even a list of skills as broad as the SCANS list cannot characterize professional work if it remains a mere list. Our understanding of professional work has evolved over time to include similar skills to those in the SCANS list but, as we will illustrate below in our discussions of the skill standards pilot projects, these professional skills are packaged, evaluated, and thus perceived in a different manner and are associated with greater status than similar professional-type skills for production and lower-level workers. Thus, SCANS represents a transition--it is based on a recognition of the need for a change--yet is still embedded in a traditional framework and perspective.
For example, Baskett and Marsick (1992) identify a shift in professional education towards what they term "competence models." They point out that "Competencies are identified by subject matter experts and clients, validated, and used as the basis for assessment and for classroom-oriented or alternative self-directed learning activities" (p. 8). But they point out that this model has been severely critiqued, pointing to Phillip Nowlen's argument that
"The most serious flaw in the competence approach is its underlying assumption that performance is an individual affair." Nowlen represents an emerging school of thought that emphasized an understanding of professionals in relationship to the complex environments in which they practice. Professionals do not work solo but are part of an "ensemble" that involves relationships with peers, the organization through which service is delivered, paraprofessionals on whom the professional depends to meet client needs. . . . Competence is much more than an abstract set of knowledge and skills. (p. 8)Thus, Basket et al. and Nowlen are in effect suggesting that the education of professionals does not always live up to the professional model.
Professional systems of certification have also been attacked for the proliferation of specialties and subspecialties (Miller, 1994). In the professions, this is often justified as a response to the increasing volume of knowledge and the inability of any individual to master that knowledge over even a moderate range of substantive domains. The search for status and prestige or political struggles about control over occupational entry also provides incentives for the establishment of subcategories. This can be illustrated by the case of skill certification for appraisers. There are eleven different industry and trade associations which provide training and certification. Certifying bodies range from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers to the Institute of Business Appraisers. Educational and work experience requirements vary drastically among industry organizations. The International Society of Appraisers requires only work experience and participation in industry-sponsored courses for membership whereas the American Society of Appraisers requires four years of college for membership in addition to work experience (Wills, 1993c).
On the other hand, current conceptions about work which suggest that there will be an increasingly rapid pace of change and a growing need for group and collaborative activities suggest that there must be some reform of the deep but narrow training that has characterized some professional specialties. In any case, in drawing lessons from professional systems of education and certification, it is important to take account of the problems and tensions that are also facing those systems.
Therefore, skill standards developed under the professional framework would promote an "expert decision-making" role for sub-baccalaureate workers which has similar characteristics to the role that professionals with formal educational credentials enjoy. Acknowledgment of the subtle nature of their duties challenges the idea that their organizational responsibilities can be described by a concise listing of skill standards and activities. The professional framework emphasizes the unique, nonroutine problem-solving abilities that will be required of the job. This has profound implications for the expansion of worker involvement within organizations.
Nevertheless, in practice, professional training and certification also faces many problems--these system often do not live up to the professional model. Thus, while the conception of professional work is a useful benchmark for the development of skill standards for front-line workers, professional systems cannot be adopted unchanged. The most effective outcome will probably be a synthesis that builds on professional practice, but avoids some of its drawbacks. This issue will be taken up in the last section of this report. We do emphasize, however, that while there are significant pitfalls to the professional path, the current discussion of industry skill standards has not adequately recognized the parallels between the objectives of industry standards and those of professional systems.
Given the multiple starting dates, the pilot projects are at different stages of development. By early 1995, all projects had completed the development of content standards. Almost two-thirds have completed the validation of the content standards as well as the development of performance standards. Most of these projects have disseminated their standards to industry groups, employers, and educators. During the middle of 1995, most of the projects are focusing on the development of curriculum guides, instructional tools, and assessment instruments, and pilot testing procedures to implement and evaluate the standards.
In a further development of the skill standards movement, Congress established the National Skill Standards Board as part of the 1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act. The Board was mandated to work towards strengthening the connection between education and employment in developing and implementing skill standards. Not only was the Board charged with establishing a framework for joint participation between business, industry, labor, educators, and other key groups but it was also given the responsibility for the development and implementation of a standardized national system. Its primary functions include the following:
Chart 1 in the Appendices lists the projects and some relevant information about them. This information includes the lead organization and formal partners, the funding department, the year started, and other information that will be discussed later in the report.
In this section, we analyze the pilot projects. One significant issue is that there is not a strong consensus about the goals of the projects. Although advocates hope to achieve a variety of goals, we focus on the two broad objectives outlined in the introduction--a short-term and a long-term objective. From the short-term perspective, the goal of the system is to improve the nature of the communication between schools and employers by specifying a set of required skills and then measuring the extent to which students have achieved them. From the long-term perspective, the goals of the skill standards movement are to help advance a broad reform strategy for both schools and workplaces. Both perspectives can be found in the pilot projects, and any judgment about the effectiveness of the projects will depend on which goal is being pursued.
We find that project organizers have made great progress, especially if one focuses on the short-term goals. For example, in some projects, the process has led to a reexamination of the needs of the industry. Less progress has been made on the long-term goals. Few of the projects have broken out of the traditional frameworks--the skill components model is still powerful. Both substantive disagreements and practical problems prevent change.
We examine three aspects of the pilot projects. In the first section, we look at the form of the standards themselves. Here we find great diversity with some projects adhering closely to the skill components approach and others making important breaks with the past. We then turn to project governance, focusing on the nature of the partnerships between schools and employers, and the role of workers. In most of the projects, workers play primarily an advisory role. The third section examines the job analysis techniques used by the projects. It is in that area where the tension between the ambitious goals of the skill standards movement and the practicalities of their implementation is most obvious.
First, this should not be seen as an evaluation of these projects. The DOL and DOE gave the pilot projects considerable latitude which led to wide variation in project outcomes; thus, the criteria that we are using to analyze the projects were not necessarily the criteria that the projects set out to meet. Second, we are focusing on the form of the standards, not their industry- or occupation-specific content. Third, in this section of the report, we do not discuss the governance of the projects. Therefore, while the form of the standards may coincide with the professional model, the governance may include only a secondary role for workers. If this is the case, we might expect the occupational or industry specific content to differ from that developed under a project which allowed a more meaningful partnership with workers.
How do we operationalize the professional and skill components models with respect to a skill standards system? What would a set of standards consistent with the professional model look like? One of the crucial distinctions between skill standards as conceived under these two models is the ultimate purpose of the "skill." In the skill components model, skills indicate a set of specified tasks that, given supervision and instruction from someone with more knowledge and organizational control, will allow a worker to perform pre-established, often routine, duties. In the professional model, on the other hand, skills indicate a set of "enablers" that will enhance the worker's ability to effectively carry out broad roles or duties within an organization in an autonomous fashion. This distinction is what allows the skill components model to function based on a set of abstract domain-free skills while the professional model must supply more context for the work performed and the interactions that exist among individuals involved in the work process. In categorizing skill standards systems, we focus on two dimensions--(1) the extent to which academic and vocational skills are integrated and (2) the extent to which the workplace is integrated into the standard.
The professional model, on the other hand, minimizes the distinction between the types of skills--academic or vocational--that workers possess and concentrates on how the two types of skills are combined to achieve a workplace-related goal. The fact that a lab technician can write complete sentences in a paper for a science course may be of little use in the workplace--the technician must be able to utilize, transfer, or apply this "academic" ability as written communication in a "real" setting for the skill to have any value.
We categorized the projects into one of three groups with respect to the extent of academic and vocational integration. In the first group, there is no integration between skill "types"--academic and vocational skills are listed separately. Six of the projects fall into this group. In the last group, which includes six projects, academic skills become embedded or integrated in the technical functions (vocational skills) required in the occupation. In the second, or transitional group, academic skills continue to be differentiated from vocational skills but are applied to a generic workplace setting or task which is meant to illustrate their use in the workplace. Nine projects applied academic skills in this manner. Chart 2 in the Appendices displays each type of academic and vocational integration and gives illustrations.
We categorized the pilot projects into three groups with respect to the extent that skills include aspects of the workplace. In the first group, which included eleven projects, skills are listed with no workplace application relevant to the specific occupation or industry. For four projects at the other extreme, the skills illustrate critical aspects of the occupation by including an organizational and industry context for the job. How workers are expected to operate in their surroundings plays an important role in skill development. In the intermediate group, specific workplace applications are provided as examples to indicate how skills may be used. Six projects fell into this group. Chart 3 in the Appendices displays each type of workplace integration and gives an illustration.
The compartmentalized perspective creates a fundamental distinction between technical and academic skills. Technical skills define the explicit knowledge and abilities which are necessary to perform industry- or occupational-specific tasks and/or duties (or set of tasks and duties). Academic skills comprise an employee's foundation or basic knowledge component. These skills form the competencies that an employee needs BEFORE gaining technical skills. Employability skills such as SCANS skills, when included, form a third, separate listing of skills which are usually appended to the skills framework.
In the same manner that types of skills are disconnected from each other, they are disconnected from any workplace context or application. The standards are not related to any workplace scenarios or settings in which worker skills and activities can be utilized or integrated. This lack of skill application is especially apparent for academic skills. For example, compartmentalized standards do not provide any background to indicate how a mathematics skill such as the conversion of fractions into decimals or percentages must be used by technicians in the performance of their jobs. Rather, the required skill is simply listed and the task that will utilize this skill is listed separately and generically.
To illustrate how skills can be compartmentalized, we have included excerpts from one project that identified skills in three overall categories--(1) technical, (2) employability, and (3) related academic--and listed them separately. Below are illustrations of the skills included in each category:
The consolidated approach structures skill standards in a framework that depends fundamentally on broad-based workplace scenarios rather than specific worker tasks to produce occupational profiles. This is more in line with the professional view of work which is less structured and more autonomous.
The professional model, by not adhering as strictly to labeling skills, promotes the expansion of worker roles within the organization. Skills identification has less value than understanding the underlying aspects of worker roles and the responsibilities that the skills, workplace scenarios, and problem-solving situations aid in identifying. Categories such as community context, worker activity statements, key purpose, position snapshot, and workplace setting/workplace situation are often a key aspect of the skill standards statements and are used to ground the skills in the workplace, not as an optional description. As one project staff member commented, standards center around what the work actually looks like and its relation to the organizational or industry mission. The knowledge, skills, attributes, and task competencies required of workers are seen as "enabling" the performance of broad organizational roles.
An example of a project that integrated critical aspects of the job as well as organizational and industry contexts into the skills is illustrated by the following format:
As the chart illustrates, there are three ways in which the projects were able to contextualize the occupational skills of employees. At one level of contextualization, projects created applied academic skills that include some generic function or object for the skills. Unlike traditional academic skills that are listed as objectives in and of themselves, academic skills at this level are "applied" in the sense that they are related to some object or activity. This application, however, does not constitute a real-world workplace orientation, for the skills and academic skills continue to be differentiated from technical skills. At another level, applied academic skills are given workplace applications as examples. These examples, however, appear more in the form of "add-ons" than fundamental underpinnings for skill development and utilization. A third level of contextualization attempts to minimize the distinction between academic and vocational skills and attaches both "types" of skills to generic workplace examples of their use (similar to the workplace applications provided by the second form of contextualization).
An example of the first level of contextualization--applied academic skill with no real workplace or organizational orientation or context--is illustrated by the following narratives for the Related Academic Skill of Language Arts:
The second level under the contextualized conceptualization is comprised of those projects that created academic skills which were applied generically with some workplace context offered through examples, applications, or scenarios. An example of this is offered by a project that differentiated a set of core skills and gave a brief context for those skills such as the one below:
Basic Mathematics: Expert press operators are often called on to use mathematical skills in their daily work. They use fractions and percentages, for example, to compute the portion of a page that is print. They use ratios and proportions to compute ink proportions and may need to know Roman numerals to ensure proper page sequencing. Rounding and estimating skills are useful in projecting paper and ink usage.This type of scenario was also used for other core skills that the project found to be important. One can see a difference in this presentation of skill and the previous example. Clear workplace applications are being used to demonstrate the use of academic skills, although there is still a difference between what the project considers "academic" and what it considers "vocational." Furthermore, there is little in the standards to indicate the extent to which the worker will be called upon to use his skills alone or in a group, with or without supervision. In other words, even though a workplace context has been used to demonstrate the skill application, the workplace context does not indicate important aspects of the organization and the worker's role within that organization.
The third type of contextualized standards moves away from the sharp differentiation of academic and vocational skills. But the workplace application does not involve the integration of the skills into the critical aspects of the worker's role within the organization or the industry. (This is what differentiates these standards from the consolidated standards.) Instead, these standards use the workplace for its examples of how skills could be used.
An example of a case where skill standards were integrated along the academic and vocational lines but where the workplace was used as an example of skill usage is illustrated by a project that presented its standards in the following manner:
The DOL and DOE had several objectives in designing a broad-based participatory governance structure. At the most basic level, the governance system will organize and implement the standards development process within a framework that can ultimately become self-supporting--not dependent on government funds. In addition, the structure will guarantee that industry-based skill standards have the support and collaboration of employers as well as all relevant stakeholders. This will be especially important when standards move into the implementation phase and later need to be updated.
In this paper, we have argued that the governance structure reflects the relative roles of workers and others within the relevant organizations. For example, skill standards and certification systems for professionals are developed and run by professionals. Imagine a committee established to determine the skills of doctors or lawyers without significant representation from members of those professions. Asking professionals to merely validate (in focus groups or on expert panels) the standards developed by other groups for their occupation would not be considered adequate (or even possible) in the professional model. Similarly, in nonprofessional occupations that have apprenticeships, union members often serve as worker representatives and participate actively in all aspects of program development. Thus, in both professional and apprenticeship models, the workers whose skills are being considered participate in the actual governance of the standards systems. Their roles (or their representatives roles) are more than advisory.
In contrast, traditional task analysis approaches that are compatible with the skill components model involve systems that are run by educators, managers, or trained analysts. Workers (often acknowledged as "subject matter experts"--SMEs) provide technical input and validation at various stages of the process. As we have pointed out, the crucial distinction concerns who is expected to make sense out of the work. As long as workers are viewed as those who demonstrate a collection of skills that can be applied to a variety of tasks at the discretion of their managers, it is logical that those managers are in the best position to determine the required skills as well as the framework for their development.
None of the pilot projects give workers or worker representatives significant influence in the governance of the projects. Only eight projects had at least one worker on their policy committee and only five of the projects indicated a positive or strong relationship with their industry's union(s). Instead, traditional decisionmakers (not the workers themselves) have kept their established roles. These projects do not challenge the traditional distinction between those who do the work and those who have authority to design the work and to determine the skills required to perform it.
Moreover, advocates and planners of skill standards stress that employers, not employees, must "own" their certification systems. For example, a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report argued that the most important element of voluntary skills certification systems is industry ownership and control. They conclude that a proprietary connection is necessary for industry to contribute significant financial investments to certification development as well as to contribute the time and commitment it requires to implement and maintain. Industry's governing role, they contend, will ensure their future interests which are vital to maintaining up-to-date systems (GAO, 1993b). While it is easy to understand the need for this type of industry buy-in, it does set up a potential conflict with efforts to integrate workers (and to a certain extent educators) into the governance process.
Research confirms that those who do the work do not have a substantial role in the development or governance of skill standards systems. Indeed, the GAO (1993b), in their review of certification systems, found that workers, actually had "little input into their (skills) development . . . although collaboration with workers is said to be key to many of the systems operating in competitor nations" (p. 5). And Wills found that many of the most competitive sectors in the U.S. economy have done little or no work to involve either "employers [or] incumbent employees in the development of nationwide skill standards" (Wills, 1993a, p. 1-3). We now turn to a discussion of the governance structures in the twenty-two pilot projects.
The governance of all the projects was similar. Project directors and their staffs were instrumental in developing an initial governance structure. They initially determined the titles and membership for the various committees and had considerable input into the committees' assigned activities and responsibilities. When they were present, existing board of directors of the industry associations often shared the responsibility with project directors/staff for initial committee appointments.
Committees were formed to fulfill two primary functions within the projects: (1) policy direction and leadership and (2) technical expertise and input. Policy Advisory Committees (also called Executive Committees, Steering Committees, or Grant Management Committees) were responsible for input into and the development of overall project direction and were comprised of coalition members from the various stakeholder groups. Technical Committees were comprised of individuals from industry (and sometimes education) with industry-related knowledge and expertise. These individuals were drawn upon to supply detailed comments and/or inventories of tasks, duties, skills, and requirements for job performance.
The following sections will discuss in more detail the responsibilities and makeup of these two most prevalent types of committees as well as the role of trade/membership associations and individual employers and the implications for their past, current, and future participation.
Within the policy-setting framework, however, these committees actually assume a variety of roles, working with and sometimes for project directors and staff members. Nearly two-thirds of the project advisory committees were truly advisory in nature, setting policy direction, guiding, validating and evaluating project design, overseeing the projects, and reviewing and approving progress. Five of the projects appeared to have policy committees that became superficial, ceremonial bodies assigned to "oversee" the project, in effect, working within a governance system that begins and ends with the director and his or her central staff. Three of the projects had policy committees that were hands-on governing bodies where the participants and policy setters worked to establish industry definitions and occupational boundaries as well as actually participating in many aspects of the job analysis process.
Although their roles differed somewhat among projects, the actual composition of the PACs was quite similar for most of the projects. Except for the eight projects that included at least one worker on their policy committees, project steering committee members were individuals who held management and/or administrative-type positions within their respective institutions or organizations--labor, industry, and education. For example, when asked what type of educators were represented on Steering Committees, most project directors indicated administrators and not teachers. Overall, front-line workers and low-level supervisors were absent from policy or steering committees. Instead, workers and supervisors were placed on "technical committees" (if placed on committees at all) where their main duty was providing input in the job analysis phase of the projects.
Although educators were present on eighteen PACs, they rarely played an active role (three of the project directors stressed strong education participation; five of the projects indicated no or insignificant education participation). In most cases, there was a strong emphasis on industry leadership and this was reflected in the prominent role of the industry and employer associations--the "suits" as many project managers referred to them. Certainly there was additional communication between educators and employers as a result of the pilot projects, but it could not be said that the process resulted in a significant development of interactive partnerships between the two sets of institutions, at least not during the development of the standards. Project managers are expecting to increase the involvement of educators when curriculum, training materials, and assessment tools are being developed.
Input from workers and/or supervisors was solicited at two phases in the job analysis process--(1) initial duty/task list development and (2) validation. After preliminary decisions were made regarding project scope and policy perspectives (by PACs, Steering Committees and/or project management and staff), workers and/or supervisors were interviewed either by mail surveys/questionnaires or in focus group sessions to determine relevant job tasks, duties, and skills and their frequency and importance in the workplace (see job analysis section for further detail on the exact methods for gaining worker/supervisor feedback). Later, they were asked to validate the list of content standards and/or tasks/duties that had been synthesized by project directors, staff, and/or policy/steering committees. At few, if any other, times was worker input or feedback required or requested. Indeed, front-line workers and supervisors got involved in the projects only AFTER policy directions had been established.
Worker and supervisor absence on policy-oriented committees had two broad effects. First it reinforces narrowly-defined entry-level worker roles and attitudes--the hallmark of the type of traditional organization that advocates hope will be reformed with the help of skill standards. Ironically, project directors who had given more latitude to workers and supervisors in focus groups stated that, in hindsight, they needed to have exerted more control and structure because this method took too much time and was too costly. Thus, the structure of the projects tended to replicate the top-down environment of the traditional workplace. Not only were workers and supervisors isolated from the industry leaders who participated in many of the PACs, but they were given few opportunities to see the industry as a whole which would have enabled them to better understand their place in the overall organizational framework and skill standards movement.
Second, a governance structure which formally separates management from workers/supervisors (as mirrored in the workplace) perpetuates workers' anxiety and hesitation in freely voicing their ideas about skills and skill standards. For example, few of the projects actually had workers on the PAC, but when a worker was present, project managers reported that they rarely participated in the discussion. This further weakened the value of their influence on the process and the value of their input.
Ironically, although employer associations played central roles in most of the projects and many reported employer enthusiasm, nearly half of the project directors stated that they had difficulty in getting cooperation from individual employers. Employers were particularly hesitant to allow front-line workers the time off from their jobs in order to participate in the focus group sessions--from one to three days depending on the job analysis process used. This was especially true for small employers.
On the other hand, there are two weaknesses in the governance structures of most of the projects. First, they fail to provide a strong role for workers, who were used primarily as subject-matter experts or advisors. Second, little progress was made in developing interactive partnerships between schools and employers. One needs to consider the promotion of standards within the schools as equally important to the promotion of standards among employers.
Yet, despite its crucial role in these processes, there has been little systematic analysis of the effectiveness and consequences of occupational analysis methods (O'Brien, 1989; Rayner & Hermann, 1988; Wills, 1993a). Moreover, there has been virtually no discussion of how the occupational analysis process and its outcomes affect workers and the roles that they play in the organization.
In this section, we examine the occupational analysis methods used by the skill standards projects. We first describe the process used by the majority (nineteen)[11] of the pilot projects--DACUM (Develop A Curriculum)--and discuss its strengths and weaknesses. We then provide some additional insight into the process as it is used in the pilot projects by taking a look at some of the alternative occupational analyses methodologies. The discussion focuses on whether the method of occupational analysis used is more consistent with the skill components or professional model and whether it promotes the development of workers for high-performance workplaces.
DACUM is facilitated primarily by educators and was developed as a way of bringing business and industry into the development of educational programs. Robert Norton (1993), who developed the technique, states that DACUM is a "significant technique for initiating needed cooperation (between business and education) in tech prep . . ." (p. 1). The process, in effect, functions as an "abbreviated version" of the widely known Functional Job Analysis (FJA) process (Wills, 1993a, p. 3-13).
Expert workers and supervisors are brought together for two-day focus group (brainstorming) sessions or "workshops" to interact, describe their jobs, and rate activities according to their frequency and importance. Workshop participants in the original DACUM structure are "not hampered or constrained by a literature base or any instructor-created document" (Norton, 1993, p. 1), but, rather, are given a blank slate in which to define and describe their occupations. From these focus group sessions, a profile chart is created which details and graphically displays the duties and tasks involved in a particular occupation. Output is submitted to a larger group of workers and/or immediate supervisors for verification. Task-specific curricula are then developed based on the component tasks that the process has determined and verified.
Nineteen of the twenty-two pilot projects used a modified DACUM process (one of the nineteen used a "straight" DACUM process and four used a combination of DACUM and V-TECS[13] methods) for job analysis. Although most of the DACUM methodology remained intact, projects modified the job analysis process in one of three ways. Four of the projects reported that workers and/or supervisors (workshop participants) were asked to validate existing industry standards instead of using the "blank slate" specified by the original DACUM model. Six projects started with output from an extended search[14] of existing industry standards, library databases, curriculum guidelines, instructional material, and current industry/occupational task lists. They then used the DACUM process to validate this output. The remaining eight used a clean slate or free-wheeling job analysis process similar to the original DACUM methodology. But these were "modified" by either including more experts in the process; developing a set of structured interviews to clarify and discuss the outcomes, their phrasing, and the terminology used; adding a mail survey; or visiting sites and observing workers. Overall, project modifications were almost all based on a perceived need for more "structured coordination" than emphasized in the original DACUM process.
Twelve of the nineteen projects that used a modified DACUM methodology organized focus groups as the primary vehicle to determine and validate the tasks and duties, five of the projects used focus groups and site visits, and the remaining two projects used written surveys or questionnaires to solicit responses. All of the projects "validated" their standards. This was done by asking workers and supervisors to comment on the standards (either by written survey or focus